The college admissions scandal underscores a simple question: why are millions of people following these so-called “social media influencers” like Olivia Jade?

You’ve probably heard that Jade’s mother, Full House star Lori Loughlin, and nearly 50 others have been charged with a scheme in which federal prosecutors say wealthy parents allegedly bribed college insiders to get their children into some of the country’s most elite schools.

“The social media pages of Lori Loughlin‘s daughter were flooded with angry comments Tuesday — after the Full House actress was busted for allegedly paying bribes to get the teen into college,” reported Page Six. “The deluge began after federal prosecutors accused Loughlin and her fashion designer hubby, Mossimo Giannulli, of agreeing to pay $500,000 to get daughters Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli designated as recruits to the University of Southern California crew team — even though they didn’t actually participate in the sport.”

Well, after surfing over to Olivia Jade’s Instagram account, one might ask why does she have over 1.3 million followers?

Instagram screenshot

Her profile looks like a generic fashion shoot album. In fact, some might even call it vapid. And yet, it apparently attracts over a million eyeballs.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

This points to a societal problem in which too many people equate personal success with simply having an audience. Case in point, what exactly has this girl done besides generate a large audience for the sake of having an audience? And how has her audience benefited personally from this exchange?

But throughout history (and until recently apparently), the definition of personal success was much broader than that. It had included serving your country, being a integral part of your community, embracing self-reliance and self-determination, having a family, being an entrepreneur, creating innovations, etc.

Here the Wright Bros. achieve personal success with only a handful of onlookers as their audience.

It was never limited to simply having an audience, because in the times before the Internet, it was difficult to even have an audience and only worth doing if your livelihood depended on it, like for P.T. Barnum for example.

But now, millions of people have been socially engineered into believing that the only barometer of personal success is how many people are paying attention to you, whether you’re a so-called “social media influencer” or a suburban status chaser with an 80k truck sitting in the driveway.

Of course, a lot of these people will never have a large following, so the next best thing for them is to simply join an existing audience of some “influencer” so they can feel like they’re part of the winning team.

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That mindset unfortunately handicaps people from doing something they can actually accomplish on their own, a form of personal success that they’re currently too blind to see.

Why live vicariously through your favorite football player and feel insecure about your status in life? Why not accept the fact that your own standards of personal success for yourself are different from that of an athlete who’s been randomly gifted with stellar genetics? Why not play off on your own personal strengths?

In short, personal success will never be monopolized by those who attract the most eyeballs, and that’s why a lot of these “social media influencers” have such vapid content despite attracting so much attention. But the substance is the real success!

And outside of Instagram photos and product placement, what have these “influencers” actually accomplished?

And all this does tie back into the college admission scandal, namely how 20 and 30-somethings had bought into the idea that they would never be successful unless they went to college. Yet the Internet is now littered with personal stories from countless people who now have well over 100K in student loan debt because they got a vapid, non-STEM degree.

Because so many people are now taught to be followers, they unfortunately equate simply having a college degree to personal success and thus they don’t factor in the cost – and the ensuing debt.

But again, personal success is a broad concept, and it’s not just limited to simply having a college degree. Fortunately, more people are now equating success to vocational careers in which they avoid drowning under debt while make good money.